Obama calls on governors to help boost educational standards

By Anne E. Kornblut
Saying his aim is to "secure our rightful place as the preeminent economy of the twenty-first century," President Obama kicked off a critical week in his administration with remarks to the nation's governors touching on education, clean energy and the economy -- just as his administration released a health care proposal that could determine whether the effort succeeds or fails.

Obama focused largely on education in the White House appearance Monday morning, formally rolling out a program to require states to certify that math and reading benchmarks are putting students on a path to college or a career.

But with governors from across the country gathered as Obama launches a last-ditch effort to salvage his health-care agenda, he sought once more to link items from across his agenda. The president said his goal of reestablishing American competitiveness was one reason "why we've taken up the cause of better health care" and a jobs bill.

"I'm not going to rest until we see more progress in each and every one of your states," he said.

The bulk of Obama's remarks to the nation's governors focused on education, which advisers have long described as a favorite subject of his, although it often takes a backseat to his other agenda items. He is working on revising the Bush-era No Child Left Behind Act, in part by tying $14.5 billion in aid for poor students to states' education standards, with an increasing push to make the national standards more predictable. Obama noted that under NCLB, 11 states had actually lowered their standards in math to comply with requirements that they show progress.

During his trip to Asia last fall, Obama met with several officials who described their students' fierce ambitions and their countries' efforts to match them. On Monday, Obama cited one of those meetings, with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, who said his biggest education challenge was "too-demanding" Korean parents.

"They want their kids to learn English in first grade and so I've had to ship in a whole bunch of foreign-speaking teachers to meet the demand," Obama said, recalling the South Korean president's remarks. "That's what we're up against. That's what's at stake -- nothing less than our primacy in the world." He mentioned two statistics showing American educational superiority has already fallen: U.S. 8th graders rank 9th in the world in math, and 11th in the world in science.

So does this mean that all of us who use to work for ETS, those who are responsible for making sure that students are properly tested before they graduate and throughout their schooling to ensure our education system is functioning properly get our JOBS back in California now? The State of California canceled it's contract with GCS because it was too expensive to pay for auditors to make sure our children are at least being tested before they are put out into the job market under educated and unable to compete with the B1 Visa imports from India,Pakistan and Korea. I personally witnessed NO immigrant children from Mexico taking any Star or CAHSEE tests in the Four northern most counties of California in the last 7 years I have worked for GCS but I have witnessed American California native children who could barely READ. Does this mean we should all send our children to India to go get a proper education because they aren't getting on in Ca or Washington State. Then they could all get their very own B1 Visa-ed job at IBM or Microsoft.